Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

I have worn this fragrance many times now and it's still fantastic on me. My girlfriend wants her own bottle now - she loves it too. It is dark, but sexy as hell. She is a writer so the ink associations work well for her and I really am drawn to cold incense smells so it works for me. But I can not figure out all of the weird associations everyone is getting from this scent.

Is this a Rorshach Test for the olfactory brain. In fact they use a graphic on the box that looks like a Rorshack test image. Smell this scent and who knows what might emerge from the depths of mind. M/Mink is weird, yes and it is cold, shimmering and slightly animalic and warm. Smells like ink, black leather, cold incense . . . animal fur. It is very alluring in a primal way because it is hard to identify. When I smell this fragrance I do NOT associate it with blood, stagnant water, sharp metal objects nor any skanky smells, etc. But the odor is so different and "outside the box" that it probes some boundaries of what is known and accepted so it can easily extract all kinds of impressions from the depths. It's a Rorshach Test for smell. Who knows what may pop into mind when you sniff it.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Originally Posted by mikeperez23

Wore this today, from a sample.

Wow, what a freaky scent. I get the animal skank, the slight watery/mildew/salt water accord and the ink. I don't smell honey, but then sometimes I'm anosmic to honey. I would imagine many people would find this sort of revolting...in an avant garde sort of way. I love these type of scents, but this seems to push my olfactory boundaries to their very limit and perhaps because of the sharpness of the salt water smell (honestly, it smelled like dirty mop water) I sort of felt a bit unclean after a couple of hours wearing it. Perhaps that was the art directors intent?? I felt similarly towards Oud 27 by Le Labo and because of this memory link I kept getting whiffs of myself and smelling oud, even though I know this scent has no oud.

I need more time to play around with this one. But for now, it is not instant love...it is, rather, this fascinating little strange creature who's language I do not speak.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

I've been wearing this for the first time today. I am not too impressed at all, it's so-so at most, and when thinking about the price of this fragrance I'm actually pissed off.

Of course it smells interesting in a way (Duh!), like everything with big amount of animalic ingridients does. Big deal.

M/MINK brings to mind some of the (animalic) independent perfumes I have tried. It's put together with ingridients that should make hell of a sensual perfume - and fails miserably.

M/MINK is a simple and fairly unbalanced blend of inky/acidy civet, bitter smell of cheap patchouli incense sticks and aldehydic/cold metallic overtones of adoxal.
This smells alot like some perfume I've tried in the past, that I hated very much, but just can't get it to my mind right now what that perfume actually was. (I'm thinking it might be the very first version of M. Storer's Monk, which was absolutely horrible and badly made civet-incense)

Byredo has very stylish and classy image as a house but when it comes to their perfumes, it falls a long way from being good. I mean, just take a look at M/MINK for example : When talking about animalic perfumes, Jérôme Epinette has a few lightyears to go until he reaches the ones like Sheldrake, Roucel, Laudamiel...

Epinette belongs into the bench and not in the playing field, with Storer, Ava Franco and many others of that kind.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Pigeon, my whole impression of byredo parfums are what you described: just image, high prices, but fragrances far from good. They`re okay, and M/Mink seems a little better than the rest of the line, but for the price they charge, which is almost the same of a 200ml of chanel exclusif, they aren`t bottle whorty at all

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Originally Posted by tott

It's up there with Secretions Magnifique if you ask me...

I don't think so. You see, Sécrétions Magnifiques is actually exceptionally well engineered. I hate the way it smells in the end, but it's well, or even masterfully made fragrance technically speaking.

M/MINK is a sad violation, nothing else. Just a ridicilous and lousy attempt to please margin.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Originally Posted by PigeonMurderer

I don't think so. You see, Sécrétions Magnifiques is actually exceptionally well engineered. I hate the way it smells in the end, but it's well, or even masterfully made fragrance technically speaking.

M/MINK is a sad violation, nothing else. Just a ridicilous and lousy attempt to please margin.

I was speaking strictly in terms of smell and wearability from a personal perspective. I don't really care if they are beautifully crafted or not in this case...

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Well thanks to the lovely PetrucciJC I was able to experience this yesterday. I'm wearing it again now and just wanted to share some thoughts... it's really excellent if you're into strange fragrances. On me it registers as jet black, inky and leathery, with the slightest sneaking hint of something coniferous (which purifies and cleans up the more animalic notes) and incense-y which almost takes all of the animal qualities and gives them a muted polish, like black with a matte finish all supported by earthy patchouli. It's animalic but if one were to base his ideas of this on what he reads here alone, I would avoid trying to imagine what else it smells like. It's its own creature. Actually the only thing I know of that resembles it even remotely is Montale's Black Musk which has a similar black leathery animal vibe though I'd say Black Musk has more of it.

This is one direction of modern perfumery that really gets me going... It's striking, even daring, creative, and unique but wearable, IMHO.

wearing this more I can't help but think that some of this inky feel is due to a tree sap accord which gives this almost a natural cleanliness.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Originally Posted by nthny

Well thanks to the lovely PetrucciJC I was able to experience this yesterday. I'm wearing it again now and just wanted to share some thoughts... it's really excellent if you're into strange fragrances. On me it registers as jet black, inky and leathery, with the slightest sneaking hint of something coniferous (which purifies and cleans up the more animalic notes) and incense-y which almost takes all of the animal qualities and gives them a muted polish, like black with a matte finish all supported by earthy patchouli. It's animalic but if one were to base his ideas of this on what he reads here alone, I would avoid trying to imagine what else it smells like. It's its own creature. Actually the only thing I know of that resembles it even remotely is Montale's Black Musk which has a similar black leathery animal vibe though I'd say Black Musk has more of it.

This is one direction of modern perfumery that really gets me going... It's striking, even daring, creative, and unique but wearable, IMHO.

wearing this more I can't help but think that some of this inky feel is due to a tree sap accord which gives this almost a natural cleanliness.

I agree nthny. I think it is quite fantastic, and don't find it to be skanky/animalic/revolting/etc.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

I just spent a few days trying this. I really love it. M/Mink opens up with a highly realistic note of Japanese ink (AKA sumi), which smells a bit like charcoal. It then goes into a honeyed patchouli phase that reminds me a little of the sugar+patchouli combination in Kilian's Straight to Heaven. While the sillage smells like dry, sweet patchouli, if you smell the fragrance up close, it smells like electrical circuits on fire. It's anything but boring.

Finally, about an hour or two later, the honeyed patchouli is still there (mostly in the sillage) while up close, M/Mink takes on a metallic tinge, that smells a bit like blood. I'd liken it more to pennies though.

The whole way through, M/Mink is really captivating. Surprisingly, it's wearable too. It's unique, sensual and comforting, but stimulating and weird. Unfortunately, it doesn't work too well with my skin chemistry, but otherwise I'd be buying a bottle as soon as possible.

Final notes: I don't find that the opening notes smell like ink per se - they smell more like "sumi ink," which smells like charcoal. Granted, there are what I'd call inky overtones, that remind of the ink used in a fountain pen. As for the animalic qualities of this fragrance, well, it's pretty tame. I don't really see any of the similarities to MKK, but that's just my nose. The civet is blended in with the patchouli so well that it almost goes under the radar.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

I totally agree with L'Aventurier, Pettruccijc and nthny opinions of M/MINK - I love it. Yes it is close to the edge with its weirdness, but the beauty of it wins out in the end. The overall effect of the scent is extremely sexy. It is provocative and has a stealthy, hard to find aspect to it that I like. Odiferous unpleasantness can occur when you test it too close up and don't give it a chance from a slight distance. Sometimes it is easier to smell it on someone else so you don't get too caught up in the individual notes. You can oversmell this thing and miss the point of it in my opinion. When you deconstruct it into parts - yes some smell off a bit. But the mix of the parts into the fragrance, smelled from just off the skin and not too close, is very intriguing.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

I had a sample of this for the last three weeks and I honestly cannot recognize it from the descriptions above!

Quite simply this is a bitter, acrid pine scent and smells like a revolting toilet cleaning PINE DISiNFECTANT.

This is a pine scent. PINE. Not, ink or honey or incense or any of the other claims. Last time I put it on I'd had enough and I tried to scrub it... but could still smell it the next day. It's HORRIBLE and inspired revulsion in a family exposed regularly to weird and wonderful perfumes.

Also, I am deeply suspicious of the marketing and images of abstract expressionist daring and poetic nonsense about 'ink'. A lot of people are gonna fall for all that and think they're buying something arty and daring. I urge people to use their noses with this one!

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

I'm resurrecting this thread - but I dont see M/Mink in the database. I got a sample from Barney's.

To me, it smells almost entirely of the putrid-swampy part of Secretions Magnifiques (a distant relative to the swampy florals a la Bas de soie). It is a note to which I must be hypersensitive. I love SM as a conceptual perfume, it is unwearable but makes an intelligent point. M/Mink smells like the unsuccessful, less interesting brother of SM. It is unwearable, but what point does it make? Making a disgusting, unwearable perfume, per se, doesn't sound creative, especially if this has already been done before and the shock value is lost.

The ad notes talk about ink - which doesn't seem a worthy conceptual idea, even provided it does smell like some type of ink. Somebody mentioned Japanese ink. Indeed, it's hard to imagine those Japanese poets creating the most serene haikus while having to smell these fumes. Or perhaps this was the point, but I doubt.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Originally Posted by cacio

To me, it smells almost entirely of the putrid-swampy part of Secretions Magnifiques (a distant relative to the swampy florals a la Bas de soie). M/Mink smells like the unsuccessful, less interesting brother of SM. It is unwearable, but what point does it make? Making a disgusting, unwearable perfume, per se, doesn't sound creative, especially if this has already been done before and the shock value is lost.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

It's really not that bad - people are being melodramatic. Plain ol' pure indonesian vetiver is a more offensive smell to most noses than this. My g/f thought it smelled nice on me when I wore it, and I thought it smelled odd but fantastic.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Sculpture:

I usually love vetiver perfumes, so I'm really curious to smell Indonesian vetiver in its original state and understand how perfumer can coax it to smell good.

As mentioned, I suspect I am hypersensitive to certain notes. If she likes M/Mink on you, though, I'd be curious to hear what your girlfriend says when you wear Secretions Magnifiques, or, without going that far, Eden or Bas de soie. Eden, which is not as sharp as Mink, has been in production for a couple of decades, so somebody must be wearing it somewhere.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Cacio,

I'm curious as to what note it is. Have you ever tried Skarb? Many seem to sense a shared note between Skarb and Secretions. I do too, actually, but only VERY slightly and the watery note in both is not what bothers me in SM anyhow, it's that wet dog musk note. Argh! Other than that wet dog musk, I actually quite like the smell of SM. There's a beautiful metallic iris present - the same metallic iris that's in Amouage's Reflection Man, actually.

I've not tried Eden or Bas de Soie so I'm not sure there, but I guess my g/f is a bit more accepting than most women as she likes Narciso Rodriguez on me, M7, Skarb, Jubilation XXV, L'Anarchiste, and many other controversial scents!

Indonesian vetiver is very very smoky. It makes Encre Noire seem tame. It's actually a quite nice smell, imo, but it does get pretty sour on the skin as it dries down, and it definitely needs to be paired with something to counter that.

The only note that bothers me in M/Mink is the terpenic pine note that seems to persist forever. I think it's a result of the raw labdanum note, a green and terpenic frankincense note, and.. I don't know, something else. It smells like black spruce oil but black spruce doesn't last that long on skin. Surely it's some synthetic, and I wish it was toned down some, as it intrudes on the beautiful raw beeswax and dry amber and frankincense accord, which is the beating gilded heart of this perfume which is wrapped in inky dark flesh.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

I have not tried skarb, so that's another one I definitely want to smell.

The note(s) that bother me is the swampy, metallic brackish note that Luca Turin calls "bilge", that is, brackish water that has become putrid in the bilge of a metallic boat (of course, we might be talking about two notes, the putrid and the metallic). Which has similarities with a dirty rotten rag, as when you leave out a rag drenched in water in the hot summer of the US south.

SM and M/mink have it quite prominently, Bas de soie is tamed down a bit and registers between that and a metallic iris. In fact, when you talked about metallic iris, I thought about BdS. If you like these notes, you should definitely smell it. Eden has no metal, just some swampy putridity, together with tropical flowers and greenery.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Originally Posted by SculptureOfSoul

The only note that bothers me in M/Mink is the terpenic pine note that seems to persist forever. I think it's a result of the raw labdanum note, a green and terpenic frankincense note, and.. I don't know, something else.

That's a good point. I've always been intrigued by this fragrance and I've been trying to wear it myself many times but there's something that really disturbs me when I get in close continuative contact with this composition. You say it's the tenacious terpentic pine note but I more asssociate Mink's unbearable weirdness to the synergy between the completely desweetened beeswax note and something chemical. The latter IMO happens to be the Byredo's signature that in Mink it's pushed to the limit.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Originally Posted by cacio

I have not tried skarb, so that's another one I definitely want to smell.

The note(s) that bother me is the swampy, metallic brackish note that Luca Turin calls "bilge", that is, brackish water that has become putrid in the bilge of a metallic boat (of course, we might be talking about two notes, the putrid and the metallic). Which has similarities with a dirty rotten rag, as when you leave out a rag drenched in water in the hot summer of the US south.

SM and M/mink have it quite prominently, Bas de soie is tamed down a bit and registers between that and a metallic iris. In fact, when you talked about metallic iris, I thought about BdS. If you like these notes, you should definitely smell it. Eden has no metal, just some swampy putridity, together with tropical flowers and greenery.

cacio

I wholeheartedly agree, these scents (including Skarb)all have that note and when I encounter it, it's very difficult for it not to 'stick out' when I wear it - I blame Secretions Magnifiques for traumatizing me with that accord. One other fragrance that also has it is Fahrenheit 32 by Dior. Blech.

Last edited by mikeperez23; 8th October 2011 at 07:49 PM.

"When you become comfortable with uncertainty. infinite possibilities open up in your life"

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

mike:

ouch, another one. I have only smelled fahrenheit 32 briefly on paper, and didn't immediately perceive it. But then i'll want to resmell perhaps waiting for the drydown.

I'm impressed by how sculpture and alfarom can distinguish among the swampy effluvia of putrid water. But then, bacterial decomposition of organic materials is known to produce hundreds of aromatic compounds. To me, it's just: putrid poisonous water, do not inhale/drink.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

Originally Posted by cacio

I'm impressed by how sculpture and alfarom can distinguish among the swampy effluvia of putrid water. But then, bacterial decomposition of organic materials is known to produce hundreds of aromatic compounds. To me, it's just: putrid poisonous water, do not inhale/drink.

I'm into challenging fragrances, definitely. LOL I guess what you call "putrid poisonous water" is what I call (in this case) "bodily fluids" or "organic smells of animalic/human derivation". Just like in Secretions Magnifique they resembles the cathegory of fluids like saliva, mucus, blood, tears, semen....or beeswax. We can't say blood stinks, or mucus stinks they more lay in the limbo of unpleasant almost "adourless smells". I more perceive them as cloying than properly disgusting.

Re: New Byredo M/Mink Launch September

I sort of see a distant link between Secretions and M/Mink, but I found Secretions horrid and M/Mink kind of pleasant. They both have a quality that's both bodily and metallic, but I find Secretions is cold, dry, and well, kind of naked in its foulness, M/Mink smothers the quality in warm, animalic honey-patchouli and an incense-y drydown.

I enjoyed M/Mink but found myself let down by the drydown. Far from being too weird, I found the notes of the drydown all too familiar from a number of Comme des Garcons: that dry, woody, astringent incense note that wears rather light. I'd rather buy 2Man if that's what I wanted. If the deliciously odd metallic-stony meets sweet-comforting meets skanky-animalic mix of the top carried on to the base, I'd have seriously considered buying M/Mink.